


i believe in reinvention

by openended



Category: Leverage, Lost
Genre: Airports, Con Artists, F/M, Paris (City)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-28
Updated: 2013-01-28
Packaged: 2017-11-27 05:53:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/658679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/openended/pseuds/openended
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their cons don't usually overlap.  And when they do, it's a mess for one of them.  (pre-series for both shows)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i believe in reinvention

**Author's Note:**

> Prompts: aliases, Atlanta, Tallahassee, short con, parking lots

Sophie scoffs as she steps out of the car into the oppressive Atlanta summer heat. She adjusts her hat, shading her eyes, and wishes to be anywhere else. The con’s almost over and she’s trying not to count the days until she can fly back to Europe where the weather isn’t criminally awful.

“Didn’t think this was your kinda circuit, Devereaux.”

She turns at the voice and tilts her head, smiles, looking charming while she stalls, trying to place him. Her stall’s about to be obvious when it finally clicks. “Sawyer,” she says smoothly, extending her hand. “Tallahassee, yes?” She doesn’t work American cons that frequently, and she knows he wasn’t in on the Boston job with the dagger. That was such a cluster, she would’ve remembered if he was there.

“Been a while,” he says by way of acknowledgement. He takes her hand so it isn’t just hanging between them and gives it a little squeeze. It’s clear she’s expecting him to kiss it, but he’s not that kind of guy. He jerks his head in the direction of the museum behind them. Banners advertising the Bellini exhibit hang motionless from the roof. “This your target?”

“You’re not an art thief,” she says, letting her Georgia accent slide.

He grins at that, a lopsided know-it-all smirk. “Not here for the art.”

She wonders what he’s playing. Long cons aren’t Sawyer’s game, he doesn’t have the patience or grace. “Well,” she withdraws her hand and puts the accent back in place, “shall we?”

He sweeps his arm forward. “After you.”

“Oh,” she turns, a few steps ahead of him. “It’s Gracie. Gracie Lynn Harper.”

“Nice to meet you, Gracie. Name’s Mark. Mark Callahan.”

Later, when the con’s over for both of them and Sophie’s left the country because that was her plan all along and Sawyer’s left the country because his plan went pear-shaped and he has to go on the run for a while, they meet up in customs at Charles de Gaulle. Sophie spies him first, arguing in typical harsh American fashion with an agent – who clearly speaks very little English – about missing luggage, and she decides to intervene. It’s better for everyone.

Sawyer picks up on the act immediately and pretends to be annoyed that he needed his fiancée to step in; it isn’t much of a stretch. He’s shaved recently and is still wearing the suit he skipped out of town in, he can kind of pass as the type of guy Sophie would marry. In perfect French, she clears up the problem within seconds and gives the luggage agent the address of a hotel for Sawyer’s missing bag, and drags him through to the line.

“Quiet,” she demands when he’s about to argue with something, again. She smiles and hands her passport to the customs agent.

He scans her identification and forms, asks her a few questions about her luggage – she tells the truth; everything stolen is in transit on a cargo flight next Sunday – and stamps her passport. “Welcome to Paris, Ms. Donovan.”

She smiles at him and walks out of the customs area and waits for Sawyer. “Why are you in Paris?” She asks once he’s caught up to her. “You don’t speak any French.”

“First international flight out of Atlanta,” he shrugs. He takes her bag. Even though it’s a roller, he’s pretending to be her fiancée; he might as well act the gentlemen.

Sophie slides her sunglasses on once they’re outside in the Paris sun, the temperature much more bearable than Atlanta. “Now this,” she says, “is civilization.”

Sawyer looks around and finds nothing familiar, nothing he likes.

She takes his hand. “Come on, we’ll get you settled.” She knows what it’s like to suddenly be on the run without anything; the missing suitcase is just another unfortunate incident in Sawyer’s past 36 hours.

He follows her into the waiting taxi, and then into the hotel. She checks them in and mentions to the concierge that her fiancée’s luggage was lost in transit and could he please send up an overnight bag, and then Sawyer’s on the nicest elevator he’s ever seen in his life, rising to the twenty-third floor. The wall drops away after the sixth floor, revealing a stunning view of the Seine.

“Come here often?” His voice is teasing. This is not his scene. He’s parking lots and gas stations, desperate families and empty promises. Not art museums and plans that last months, flawless French and four-star hotels that cost more a night than he averages in a single con. 

Smiling, Sophie exits the elevator on their floor. “It’s a temporary stop.” The painting’s going on to her real target – a hotelier in Dubai – and she needs a few days to lay low before moving on with her plans. The door beeps and unlocks, she pushes it open and lets Sawyer go first with her bag.

She’s offering him a place to crash while he figures out which way is up, has no intentions of letting this become anything more than a grifter helping a con man with all his IDs burned, but when he kisses her after they’ve finished room service dinner and are halfway through the second bottle of champagne, she kisses him back.

He’s gone two days before she needs to leave, having secured a new identity and a flat in London for a month. He leaves without fanfare, he’s simply gone one morning, his pillow cold. He doesn’t leave a note. This is how they exist.

She flies to Dubai and delivers the painting and steals several million dollars off the unsuspecting hotelier, and eventually gets a call from Nathan Ford.

He flies to London and sorts everything out and then ends up in Australia, feeling an old, unburied grudge start to itch again. 

When they find the wreckage of Oceanic 815, serendipity places Sophie in the exact same hotel in Paris. Names begin to scroll across the screen and she learns that Sawyer wasn’t even his real name. She’s not entirely convinced that James was his real name, either. She toasts the television with a flute of champagne and makes a point to run a short con sometime soon in his memory.


End file.
